BY GREG McCARTAN
BOSTON - Twenty-five people turned out at Harvard University March 5 to hear Militant editor Naomi Craine speak on "Washington's War Drive Against Iraq." The event was sponsored by organizations hosting the Democracy Teach-In, a week of discussions, seminars, and events on culture, corporations, war, labor, environmental issues, women rights, and other political and social questions. Danny Paul Nelson, one of the teach-in organizers, said a meeting on Iraq was important, "because it is the clearest and most present example of U.S. abuse of its super-power status and the U.S. using violence to acquire raw materials around the globe to boost the corporate capitalist economy." Nelson chaired the event.

To understand why Washington is pursuing its course toward war in the Mideast and elsewhere, Craine said, it is necessary to see that "imperialism is a system where a tiny handful of super-rich individuals and families grow wealthy off the toil of workers and peasants around the world. Their plunder worldwide is an extension of their exploitation and oppression here in the U.S.

"But imperialism also creates its own gravediggers," she said, pointing to the decision by a majority of United Auto Workers members at Caterpillar to vote down a contract proposed by the company and the union's top officials. "Workers at CAT stood up with dignity and solidarity and struck a blow for all those who fight against exploitation, racism, oppression, and imperialist war," the Militant editor said.

Referring to the February 23 deal negotiated between United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan and the Iraqi government, Craine said the "so-called inspectors deal resolves nothing. On international television and before top Iraqi officials, Annan praised the U.S. and British governments for having shown a correct use of force," Craine said, "thus helping to establish a record of use of force to impose their will around the world. The `peace agreement' is a fraud."

Craine explained why the war drive is "aimed not only against Iraq but against the working people in the former Soviet Union, especially in Russia. The war drive is part of tightening the noose around the workers states with the aim of restoring capitalism.

"Workers in Russia are among those who `broke the rules' U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright says everyone must follow," Craine said. "They broke the rules in 1917 by making a revolution and overturning the prerogatives of capital." This contention was the focus of the discussion period, as many participants in the meeting questioned the assertion that capitalism had not yet been reestablished across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

"Following World War II," Craine said, "the U.S. rulers wanted to take back Russia and to turn back the Chinese revolution. But they were able to do neither, in part because of the U.S. GIs who mobilized and demanded to go home. Instead of the hot war they wanted, Washington had to settle for a `Cold War,' and to see if, by isolating the Soviet Union, the Stalinist bureaucracy there could do the job for them."

With the collapse of these regimes at the start of the 1990s, she said, "Washington thought they had made enormous progress and could work with these wannabe-capitalist governments to rapidly bring back capitalism. But they are now realizing that is not the case. They have to convince working people in the workers states to accept a different social system - wage slavery. They cannot achieve that goal in a cold way; capitalism can only be returned through war against the working class," she said.

The occupation of Yugoslavia, the war drive against Iraq, and the expansion of NATO are all aimed at this goal, she said. "These plunderers are marching toward more wars. We need to oppose every move they make in violation of Iraqi sovereignty. The sanctions, the `inspection teams,' and the diplomacy are all part of their war moves," Craine said.

"The social force that can stop imperialist war once and for all is the working class," she said, "the same people who voted down the contract at CAT, those who are mobilizing in France and Germany demanding jobs, those who are fighting across Asia in response to the economic crisis of capitalism." Craine also pointed to the "coming into politics of working people in the workers states, such as the 250,000 health care workers who recently struck in Romania and the tens of thousands mobilizing in Kosovo for their national rights."

Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists in Boston helped to build the meeting, and used the event as one way to continue to campaign against imperialism and its wars. Among those attending were Harvard students; a young immigrant worker interested in socialist politics who has been active in anti-war protests; and a subscriber to the Militant from Florida who had helped build protests there against the planned U.S. slaughter of the Iraqi people.

Participants in the meeting purchased six copies of the Militant and one of New International no. 7, featuring "Washington's War against Iraq: The Opening Guns of World War III," by Jack Barnes. Nine copies of the Militant were purchased from socialists at a literature table at Harvard during the day.

At a class on the lead article in New International no. 7 two days after Craine's meeting, five people new to the socialist movement participated along with YS and SWP members. Three students and workers who had joined a recent protest against Washington's war drive came to their first socialist event. Two purchased copies of the New International, while a third took a bundle of five Militants to sell to his friends.

Greg McCartan is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.  
 
 
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